Claims

Eighteen-month-olds help on about half of laboratory trials, often opting to play or observe instead of helping

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2019 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2024: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i? Eighteen-month-olds' helping is unreliable: they help on about half of laboratory trials and often choose play or observation instead, whereas 30-month-olds are less likely to engage in unhelpful behaviors. → Dahl A. 2019

Evidence

Dahl A. 2019

Dahl A., Brownell C. A. (2019). The Social Origins of Human Prosociality. Current Directions in Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419830386

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports, citing Waugh & Brownell (2017), a laboratory finding on toddlers' helping reliability: "18-month-olds help on about half of laboratory trials." By comparison, the review states 30-month-olds are less likely to engage in unhelpful behaviors.

"For example, 18-month-olds help on about half of laboratory trials, often opting to play or observe instead of helping an adult (Waugh & Brownell, 2017)."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id eighteen-month-olds-help-half-of-trials
title Eighteen-month-olds help on about half of laboratory trials, often opting to play or observe instead of helping
description Eighteen-month-olds help on about half of laboratory trials, often opting to play or observe instead of helping
status review
evidence_strength weak
newest_evidence 2019
recheck_by 2024
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-17
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — dahl-a-2019

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